Mr. WHEELER. In other words, you are closing 1,500 beds and building a new one with 200 beds?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. WHEELER. What I am trying to do is to be able to answer questions that are directed at me and I am still unable to answer them.

Dr. HAWLEY. I understand.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. General, while we are on this question of temporary versus permanent hospitals, I had several conferences with you back in January, February, March, and probably April, as regards the waiting list of Oklahoma veterans. I told you at that time that the American Legion and the VFW told me we had a waiting list of 677, a proportion of which, a large proportion of which, were service-connected.

Now, your statements always were to me-and I questioned you once here in front of the committee-that the records furnished you by the Oklahoma hospitals were to the effect that there were no service-connected or emergency cases on the waiting list.

At the time you were telling me that, the veterans' hospital at Muskogee was calling up the service officers of the American Legion and the VFW, telling them not to send any more veterans to them; that they could not take care of them.

One week after you testified here before the committee, we had a veteran who presented himself to the Muskogee veterans' hospital for admission as an emergency case, and he was denied admission as an emergency case, and as I said on the floor of the House, the only reason that made me doubt that was that he died 2 days later.

Now, naturally, there is not going to be a waiting list down there if the hospital calls up the VFW and the American Legion service officers and tells them to quit sending cases over there, service-connected or emergency cases; that they cannot handle them. Certainly your statistics would reflect that there are no waiting cases if the service officers of the Legion and VFW are called up and told not to present themselves, and that situation still exists down there.

Now, I had a conference with you when we were trying to get you to keep open the Norman General Hospital. You sent Colonel Brown to Oklahoma City under the theory that we were going to get an additional 200 beds at the hospital by moving out V. D. beds there. Now, that has fallen by the wayside.

Now, here is what I am trying to get at: I get tired of these glowing reports that there are no service-connected or emergency cases. think the public, from the information that comes out of your office, it seems to me, gets such a glowing report that everything is going all right, when I know down in my State that they are not. I just fairly well sympathize with the Appropriations Committee and everyone else, but if you are not going to come in here and tell us what you need-I know in my State, and I cannot speak for the rest of them-I know in my State, the State commander of the American Legion and the State commander of the VFW are not horsing me around when they say they have 677 cases waiting and yet we are not going to get anything done if your story is going to be that those cases are not waiting.

Concerning this man who had been denied admission at Muskogee, Okla. and I have the name in my office of the captain who turned

him down, and he died the next day-I get tired of coming in here and everywhere else and hearing all these defenses put up that the American veteran is being well taken care of.

It sounds good. The American public is being sold a bill of goods that they are being taken care of and I know in my State they are not being taken care of.

You once told me that the Oklahoma City Hospital would be finished on December 31, 1947. Then you changed it in here and said, "I think it is going to be finished in 1950," and now I find that it is not even contracted for. The architect's plans are not drawn or anything else; and yet that was the argument that you put to me and the other Oklahoma Congressmen: That we do not need the temporary hospital at Norman, because one of these days we are going to have a general hospital with a thousand beds in Oklahoma City to take care of them.

The only way we can work these things out is if we have a true picture of what is going on, and if you do not know those things, you should check there down at Muskogee, Okla., and such places and find out if they told the service officers to quit sending those cases, and make them quit sending you reports up here that there are no. service-connected or emergency cases waiting.

Do you know of this service veteran that was denied admission at Muskogee?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes, I have forgotten the details and I make no attempt, of course, to defend an error in judgment. I can only say that it has happened a number of times that a man has walked out of a doctor's office after a complete physical examination for life insurance, or something like that, and dropped dead of a coronary after he gets out the door; but the fact that a person dies shortly after a medical examination means one of two things: Either that he was not examined carefully or that it was impossible in the light of present-day medical knowledge to detect something of a serious nature.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Let me ask you this:

As a layman, I would say this: If a veteran was brought into a hospital, unconscious, with blood all over him, to me as a layman that means that the fellow is in pretty bad shape.

Now, then, it also means to me this: If they did not have the bed to take care of him, they either had to make the ruling in there that he was not an emergency case or they could not take care of him. If they made the ruling that he was not an emergency case, they certainly were in error. If they made the ruling that they did not have the beds to take care of him, then that is the situation, and I want you to come in here and tell us what you need to take care of those cases down there. Now, that is an illustration.

What I am trying to point out is that there are many cases that go to the Muskogee Hospital and Will Rogers that are denied admission because they cannot take care of them.

In that case, the only reason that stands out is that the fellow died the next day. If they can go ahead and linger along a few years, they are not emergency cases.

Mr. KEARNEY. I think in order to expedite the questioning here, I am going to ask the committee to alternate.

Mr. Ramey, do you have any questions you want to ask the General? Mr. RAMEY. No; I have no further questions.

Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Rankin?

Mr. RANKIN. Yes; I have one question of the General.

General, this was an individual case that the gentleman from Oklahoma is talking about and if we were going into all the individual cases and all the individual complaints that come to our offices, it would be just an interminable process here, without getting anywhere. Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Let me interrupt right there.

Mr. RANKIN. Now, I want to ask you what the situation is generally with reference to hospitals over the country?

Are they amply taken care of or do they need more attendants, more hospitals?

You are at liberty to say what you please here.

Dr. HAWLEY. With all deference to the gentleman from Oklahoma, I do feel that, the country over, the veteran is well taken care of, within these limits:

There is, as has been pointed out, a large waiting list of which only a very small proportion have been determined to be serviceconnected and of which we estimate a larger proportion will eventually become service-connected.

I have here the report of the 30th of April, and in the country as a whole there are 20,996 on the waiting list, of which 83 are serviceconnected and 3,575 are estimated or presumed to be service-connected eventually.

Now, that does not mean that all of those are in immediate need of hospitalization, nor would I want to leave the impression that every veteran in immediate need of hospitalization in every part of the country is cared for immediately.

Whenever a service-connected or a prima facie service-connected case, which has not yet been adjudicated, is not admitted immediately at the hospital, I would like to know the facts, and when this occurs to anyone in need of immediate hospitalization, I should like to know the facts.

I can cite this, that at Hines, a year ago, there were some 2,400 or 2,500 patients on the waiting list at that hospital, in Chicago. Today there is not a single veteran on the waiting list of that hospital, and there are 300 or 400 vacant beds.

Mr. RANKIN. What is the capacity of that?

Dr. HAWLEY. Around 3,200.

Mr. RANKIN. That is one of the biggest in the country?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes.

Now, there was an adequate staff and a system of medical determination as to the need.

I do not want to give a general impression but one reason for the large waiting list is that the veteran applies for admission on his Form P-10, and the evidence on the P-10 is that it is not an emergency, and so he is not examined at that time but is put on the waiting list.

Now, when he goes up to the hospital for examination it may be determined that it is not necessary to hospitalize him for that condition.

What I want to do all over the country, and am working toward, is to use the same system as has been demonstrated so efficiently at Hines, which is to make a medical determination as to whether the veteran requires hospitalization. If he does not, the application is denied at that time and he does not become a part of a waiting list.

I am quite sure that in Oklahoma those hospitals have been overloaded and there are people waiting for admission to hospitals which they cannot get into immediately, and again, I am sure that the gentleman has been furnished this information but I find it very difficult to believe that there are 600 service-connected cases in the State of Oklahoma that cannot get into hospitals and all I can do is to say from my report that in the whole St. Louis branch, which includes the States of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, as of April 30, shows 9 service-connected cases awaiting admission and 216 that will probably be service-connected when their claims are adjudicated, which is a total of 225 cases in the entire branch.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. General, let me interrupt you.
Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Johnson, do you mind waiting?

I will give you ample opportunity, because I think the gentleman is well within his rights in asking these questions.

Mr. RANKIN. Let me finish.

General, last year, we had, or the year before last, some writers to attack the Veterans' Administration and spread all over the country a lot of propaganda about the conditions in these hospitals and we went through a thorough examination and found, if I remember correctly, about four or five hospitals in which there were some irregularities but on the whole we found they were far better-I say in the presence of all the men here who were on the committee with methe conditions were far better than they were in any other class of hospitals in the country, and one man inserted in the record a lot of statements that had come to him from veterans and we checked up on them and I think found every one of them was an NP patient; that is, a mental patient.

Now, I have no axe to grind. I have been on this committee 22 years. I have visited more veterans' hospitals than any other Member of Congress. I have gone there when they were not expecting me. I have just plunged in and gone through every phase of it and I want to say that under the circumstances, as I see it now, the Veterans' Administration is doing a splendid job all over the country. There may be isolated cases. There are always such cases of men who are not properly cared for; but as a rule I think you are doing a splendid job.

Mr. CROW. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Crow.

Mr. CROW. I would like to say for the record, also, General, that I recently visited the Minneapolis veterans' hospital, and I found the conditions very good and the men receiving excellent care.

There is one question I wanted to ask you, though, about the Minneapolis hospital. Why is the construction of the new addition delayed until 1950? They are terribly crowded in that hospital, and are very much overcrowded.

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes, sir.

I will let Dr. Press correct me if I am wrong.

That new construction was a part of a non-bed-producing project, which was appropriated for in fiscal year 1947, this present fiscal year, of which, I think, there were $19,000,000 appropriated for non-bedproducing projects, but the Bureau of the Budget in going over our plans for non-bed-producing projects for the next three fiscal years set it at approximately $53,000,000 annually for non-bed-producing projects.

At the same time, also, they closed that $19,000,000, which we had this year, or thought we had, and we have no money available, until this appropriation bill is passed, to start that construction.

Mr. CROW. I thought that was authorized, but it has not been authorized yet?

Dr. HAWLEY. No; we have no money.

Mr. CROW. We found the beds terribly crowded. When we tried to get between them, they had beds down the center aisle in the wards, and in rooms where they should only have two people they always had four people. I have never seen a place more overcrowded.

Dr. HAWLEY. That is right.

Mr. CROW. But one other question I want to ask you, and that is in regard to Americus, Ga. That is a medical center?

Dr. HAWLEY. No, sir; that is to be a small tuberculosis hospital. Mr. CROW. A 200-bed?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes.

Mr. CROW. How about Tallahassee? Is that a medical center? Dr. HAWLEY. No; that is to be a small general hospital.

The program, as you know, contemplates these small feeder hospitals of local service as well as the big general hospitals and there are quite a number of the small hospitals going in places outside of medical centers but no large hospitals will be placed there.

Mr. CROW. Do you consider the Iowa City hospital a large hospital?
Dr. HAWLEY. 500 beds, yes, sir.

Mr. CROW. But 200 beds, you consider a small hospital?
Mr. HAWLEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Allen.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I want to reiterate something that I have said several times, and something that does not need to be said again, that I have every confidence in General Hawley. I appreciate the work that he has done and is doing. I have no criticism of his administration. He is having and will have my sympathetic help and cooperation.

I realize that there may be cases here and there that may be somewhat irregular but I know that one placed in his position, with the great responsibility that he has on his shoulders, cannot be held accountable for every error in judgment that may arise over the Nation.

I want to make this further statement, Mr. Chairman, that I still think it is the business of this committee and the business of the Congress to see that General Hawley does not have a personnel ceiling upon him and his department, making it impossible for him to operate the hospital beds which he now has and will have after July 1. Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Meade.

Mr. MEADE. Following the line the chairman was talking about, General Hawley, you asked the committee for 61,000 employees, which you now have, for fiscal 1948, to operate 102,000 beds. That is a ratio of 6 employees for every 10 beds.

Now, the Budget Bureau cut that by 4,818, and you made a statement that that would necessitate the closing of 4,000 beds, or a ratio of 12 to 10.

You are operating on a 6 to 10 now and by cutting out 4,818 employees you will close 4,000 beds, a ratio of 12 to 10.

Dr. HAWLEY. The answer to that, sir, is that we cannot close NP beds where the ratio of employees to patients is very low, and we cannot close tuberculosis beds, and all of the closing of beds will have to